Tag Archives: John Michael Montgomery

Big-voiced bluegrass singer Dave Adkins has just released a second solo album which is worth checking out. Musically this is solid bluegrass with a dominant banjo, but what makes it stand out is Adkins’ voice.

My favourite track is the stunning lost-love ballad ‘Foolosophy’, an outstanding song from two great writers – Larry Cordle and Chris Stapleton. Adkins’s magnificent vocal shows hitherto unguessed elements to his voice as he emotes on this bar room weeper:

Well, I’ve been spending all my nights just searching for some truth
In a bar room with a bottle just crying and trying to prove
That a man can find some peace of mind when a woman he loves leaves
That’s my lonesome heart in foolosophy

Well, I know if I keep drinking
That somehow I won’t hurt
And it won’t take forever to get me over her
Someday soon she’s coming back
It’s just what I believe
That’s my lonesome heart in foolosophy

I bet in a hundred years from now
My researching will show
That a jukebox, smoke and whiskey will heal a broken soul
No doubt I’ll be remembered as Hillbilly Socrates
With my lonesome heart in foolosophy

The mid-tempo ballad ‘Change Her Mind’, one of five on the album which Adkins wrote himself, is very good, with its protagonist’s hope of regaining lost love. He also wrote the cheerfully brisk gospel number ‘A Whole More To Tell’, and the attractive mid-paced love song ‘One And Only’.

Adkins wrote ‘You Don’t Have To Go To Be Gone’ with Paula Breedlove and Brink Brinkman; this is a strong song about a marriage which is hanging on in name only.

The tragic ‘Russell Fork River’ is an intense murder ballad with a twist which Adkins wrote with Dawn Kenny and David Morris. The actual murder is the swift judicial execution of a man believed to have drowned his sweetheart, whose death was actually an accident. The same trio wrote the trucking song ‘Turn And Burn’.

Another dramatic story song, ‘Emmaline’ takes us to Kentucky coal country and a cheating husband whose guilty heart takes him to his death – or has he faked his death to run away with his secret lover?

The subdued ‘Angel Song’ has a very pretty melody and a sad lyric about bereavement. ‘It’s Not Over (Til I Get Over You)’ is an emotional ballad co-written by the great Tom T Hall about facing an empty home after the protagonist’s wife has left.

‘Wasting Away’ is a pacy song written by the late Randall Hylton, and is decent without making the same impact as the ballads. More effectively, Adkins covers John Michael Montgomery’s 1990s country hit ‘Sold’, which works very well given an bluegrass treatment, and is very enjoyable.

This is an excellent bluegrass album from a singer with a strong and distinctive voice.

Ray Price’s swan song was recorded last year while the legendary singer was battling pancreatic cancer. Beauty Is … The Final Sessions is a combination of countrypolitan and traditional pop, in the style for which Price was known in the 1970s when he scored such hits as “For The Good Times”, “I Won’t Mention It Again”, and “You’re The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me”.

Released on the independent Amerimonte label, Beauty Is contains a number of names among its credits that will be familiar to long-time country fans, from Fred Foster, who produced the project, and Bergen White who conducted the orchestra to Vince Gill and Martina McBride who lend some vocal support. “Beauty Is In The Eyes of The Beholder” was written by Jon Gray and Rich Grissom, and went unrecorded for nearly twenty years, having been rejected by a number of marquee names such as Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, John Michael Montgomery, and Whitney Houston. Kenny Rogers apparently recorded it but that version was never released. The lovely string-laden ballad is the first of two tunes featuring harmony vocals by Vince Gill; the second is a very nice version of the Cindy Walker-penned “Until Then”, which is the best song on the album. Willie Nelson’s “It Always Will Be” is a close second, although the background vocals on this track are a little too saccharine for my liking.

Ray Price began his recording career in 1948 as a honky-tonk singer and was later derided as a pop sell-out when he embraced the countrypolitan sound that was in vogue in the early 70s. There are no hardcore country songs on Beauty Is, but there are a few very nice traditional pop numbers including “I Believe”, “Among My Souvenirs”, and “An Affair To Remember”, which is performed as a duet with Martina McBride.

Beauty Is may be a bit too mellow for some tastes, and it might have benefited from an uptempo number or two, but Price knew who his core audience was and wisely avoided chasing more contemporary trends. Although his voice lacked the range of his heyday, it was in remarkably good condition and it is difficult to remember that Price was an 87-year-old man in failing health at the time these recordings were made. It doesn’t contain any stretches or surprises, but it is a very fitting capstone to a career that spanned more than six decades and a gift that Ray Price fans are sure to treasure.

When Sammy Kershaw convened in the studio to follow up Feelin’ Good Train he stuck with his trusty production team of Buddy Cannon and Norro Wilson. In addition to his secular work, they’d teamed up for a holiday release, Christmas Time’s A-Comin’ (the title track being my favorite version of that fabulous song) in the winter of 1994, and Greatest Hits, Chapter 1 in 1995. As a result, when Politics, Religion and Her was released in May 1996, it stuck true to the formula Kershaw had honed since his debut five years earlier.

Lead single “Meant To Be,” an uptempo ode to finding love in unexpected places, was the most successful at radio peaking at #5. He followed with the novelty song “Vidalia” which reached a #10 peak that summer. Both are very good although “Vidalia,” a song I remember distinctly from watching the video on CMT as a kid, isn’t the greatest lyric in Kershaw’s catalog.

Radio didn’t respond as kindly to the album’s title track and it only managed to squeak into the top the top 30. Thanks to a killer lyric by Bryon Hill and Tony Martin plus underpinnings of mournful steel, it’s my favorite of the four singles. Deflecting pain has rarely sounded so good as it does here:

Vern’s days of major chart success were about over by the time Nickels and Dimes and Love was released in March 1993, not surprisingly for an artist 58 years old. Although the hits had largely stopped, the excellent recordings continued in abundance. This album has a little different history behind it than Vern’s other Columbia releases as producer Rick Hall took Vern to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to record this album.

Vern had been off the charts for over a year when Columbia released ”Back When” as a single. Since the single only reached #67, Columbia gave up on Vern. Without major label backing, there would be no more chart singles for Vern Gosdin, and no more major label albums, except for various hit collections.

The album opens with the title track, a nostalgic look at the early years of a successful relationship, when times were tough and money was in short supply. This song falls in the usual medium-slow groove that Gosdin favored. The song may be familiar to some as a track on John Michael Montgomery’s Life’s A Dance album.

Remember when pocket change was all we had
And all those calls from the corner phone booth collect to mom and dad
And that old worn out couch was called our bed
When our cuisine was pork and beans, baloney and day old bread.

Remember that damn old car that kept on breaking down
And all the times it left me stranded thumbing all over town
And that old weekly paycheck just never stretched enough
Back in the times of nickels and dimes and love.

Although not a hit, the Hugh Prestwood-penned “Back When” was an excellent song, yet another nostalgic look back, but this time at a relationship that is struggling. I’m not sure that the song ever would have been a huge hit, but it likely would have been a top twenty record had it been released a few years earlier. Tempo of the song would be described as medium fast and a banjo is discernable along with outstanding fiddle and steel guitar.

Back when these cloudy hearts were sunny skies
And there were stars, not teardrops in these eyes
We wouldn’t even let the moon get blue
Darling I swear we need to get back to – back when

“Where The Tall Grass Grows” follows up the theme of looking back, this time on a relationship, his own, that is over. This song would be recorded by several artists, including George Jones and Ricky Van Shelton.

There’s three bedrooms, hardwood flooring and the kitchen’s new
It’s got everything a family needs with a backyard view
Ask anyone where it is, everybody knows
Who used to live here, where the tall grass grows.

The first three songs were all outside material. We now come to the first of five songs Vern co-wrote. Jukeboxes were, at one time, a frequent topic of country songs. The year 1993 saw two such songs chart in Doug Supernaw’s excellent “Honky Tonkin’ Fool” (a song that deserved better than being marooned at #50) and Joe Diffie’s “Prop Me Up Beside The Jukebox” (it reached #3). Vern’s nice medium-tempo ballad , “Bury Me In A Jukebox”, would have made a good single release as it is a better song than either the Diffie or Supernaw songs.

I’ve been hangin’ in here every night since you’ve been gone
This old honky tonk’s become my home away from home
I even got my favorite chair
It always sits right here
There by the jukebox, where I don’t feel so alone
Every time I put my money in
I hear the saddest song
My friends on the jukebox don’t mind if I sing along

So bury me in a jukebox when I die
Every time I think of her I get so lonesome I could cry
And it takes me up to heaven when they play made in heaven
Bury me in a jukebox when I die

Another piece of outside material, this time from the trio of Auldridge, Nicholson and Trils, “Any Old Miracle” is another slow ballad, this one of a distressed man asking God for a small miracle, this miracle in the form of some help in forgetting a lost love.

It’s late, and I sure do hate to bother you
But I know you’re the only one
Who knows what I’ve been goin’ through
It’s her, keepin’ me up all night again
And Lord I just had to call on you
To ask a favor of a friend
Any ol’ miracle that you could send me down
Don’t go to too much trouble Lord
What ever you might have around
‘Cause I’m never gettin’ over her
Without some help from you
I’m gonna need a miracle
Any ol’ miracle will do

“I Like My Country Music Kinda Rock”, another Vern co-write, is a bit disingenuous, since I’ve seen little evidence that Vern ever had much rock in his soul. This song would be best described as up-tempo country, with very country instrumentation. I really like the song and feel it might have made a good single.

“Two Good People With a Love Gone Bad” is a fine duet with Janie Fricke. Written by Vern Gosdin, Buddy Cannon and Dean Dillon, this slow ballad shows just how good a duet can sound when a pair of excellent, compatible voices are paired up.

Vern’s composition “What Are We Gonna Do About Me” attempts to show the perspective of a the child in divorce proceedings. The perspective of the child is a sad perspective, no doubt, when the topic is divorce. My folks were married for 54 years so it’s not a matter I personally ever had to face. “Gone in a Heartbeat” is another slow ballad provided by other writers. A cautionary ballad about taking someone for granted.

“Better Time to Say Goodbye” reunites songwriters Cannon, Dillon and Gosdin, and closes the album with a sad slow ballad, this one detailing the final act of the break-up.

Few artists have ever exited a record label with such an exquisite album. The album is a bit of a downer, but there’s not a song on the album that I don’t like. I really loved the duet with Janie Fricke but I don’t think there is just one standout track. Vern is in great voice throughout, and the accompaniment is solid country throughout. While I think Vern was still officially signed to the label for another year or two, Columbiawould issue no further albums of new material. I would give this album a solid “A” – if you want to give it an A+, I won’t argue.